Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) and His Landscapes: Ideas on Nature and Art

C. Kleinert Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) and His Landscapes: Ideas on Nature and Art 397 p., 220 b/w ill. + 31 colour ill., 190 x 250 mm, 2014 ISBN: 978-2-503-55038-1 Languages: English Hardback The publication is available. Retail price: EUR 145,00 Painting landscapes was very much a private activity for Peter Paul Rubens. Whilst the majority of his other works were commissioned, the landscapes seem to have been painted for his own pleasure and delight and stayed in the artist?s possession until his death. Most of them were painted in the last decade of his life; a happy period, in which Rubens retired from public duties and spent most of his free time studying the antique and enjoying sojourns on his country estate, castle Het Steen. To grasp this profoundly personal character of Rubens?s landscapes, this book considers the artist?s highly complex method of pictorial invention to illuminate the perception, implementation, dissemination, and posthumous reception of views on nature and landscape as depicted in Rubens?s landscape art. By investigating contemporary notions on the changing perception of nature and landscape in late 16th and early 17th-century southern Netherlandish culture, Rubens?s position within this socio-cultural matrix will be established, thus shedding new light on the artist?s own perception of nature and landscape. The re-assessment of the influence of classical and contemporary ideas about nature and landscape, as well as Rubens?s personal sense of place, will illuminate important characteristics which further define Rubens?s ideas about nature implemented in his landscape art. Also, fresh light will be cast on the sudden promulgation and dissemination of Rubens?s apparently private views on nature and landscape through a novel examination of the print series of the Small and Large Landscapes, reproducing the artist?s landscapes. The final theme in this illuminating book considers the posthumous reception of Rubens?s ?painted ideas of landscape?. The book also contains an updated version of the catalogue raisonné of Rubens?s landscape art, supplemented AUTHOR'S PREFACE - INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 1: NOTIONS OF NATURE IN EARLY MODERN FLEMISH CULTURE 1.1 The process of urbanisation and the perception of nature and landscape Economic expansion and cultural development Town and country 1.2 The rural Renaissance Ideals of country life The hofdicht and landscape painting 1.3 'Landscapes are the proper glory of the Netherlanders' Land and war Land and sea 1.4 Contemporary ways of reading nature in landscape paintings Nature as divine creation The proto-scientific view of nature Nature as mundus symbolicus CHAPTER 2: RUBENS'S IDEAS ON NATURE IN THEORY AND PRACTICE: THE LANDSCAPE PAINTINGS 2.1 Nature and art in Rubens's landscapes 2.2 Natural motifs in Rubens's landscapes Rubens's ideas of nature and Pliny's Natura/is Historia Natural motifs in Rubens's early landscapes Rock formations and watersides Marshlands and islands Overgrown rocks Natural phenomena Light Clouds The rainbow 2.3 Visions of nature and landscape: Horace and Virgil Laus ruris: praising rural nature Horace, Virgil, and Rubens's late landscapes CHAPTER 3: THE DISSEMINATION OF RUBENS'S LANDSCAPE ART: THE PRINTS 3.1 The state of research Rubens and the engraved reproductions of his works 3.2 Rubens and Schelte a Bolswert 3.3 The Small Landscapes Engraving the Small Landscapes Small Landscapes reproducing landscapes recorded in the Specification Small Landscapes reproducing other landscapes Two Small Landscapes engraved from workshop copies Small Landscapes after lost paintings Dating the Small Landscapes 3.4 The Large Landscapes: translation, inscriptions and dedications Stormy Landscape with Philemon and Baucis The Shipwreck Landscape with Atalanta and Meleager pursuing the Calydonian Boar Return from the Harvest The Prodigal Son Pieter C